RacingThePlanet: Madagascar 2014 Blogs

hello running world

23-Jul-2014 02:28:17 AM [(GMT-05:00) Eastern Time(US & Canada)]

This is my first ever blog post, a dubious moment to note and celebrate? Perhaps.Nevertheless, here I am.

In the past I have cast silent aspersions on the practice of blogging because I imagined the context fairly self-serving / inward looking (hello world, please hear me talk…don’t worry I won’t listen in return).However, this blog has a selection process built into the premise: we are all covering 155 miles in Madagascar, we are all running nerds, and for the most part this forum is one to share thoughts, tips, sage words of advice (on important topics like thigh chaffing, for example). Alas, while I bemoan the undercurrent of narcissism in the blogosphere, I will likely use this space for out-loud musings and less for practical advice.I am an academic.We can’t help ourselves.You have been warned.

As background, this is my context: I started running for a track club at six.I was fast and the coach said so.At the time that was enough. I committed.I ran the 400m in high school and the half-mile for a competitive college program. I was good but not great.I have run in many topographies (to name a few): Thailand, New Zealand, India, Alabama, around the Eiffel Tower, Scotland, Nepal, and on the sun kissed dirt trail outside my father’s house in Santa Fe, New Mexico.My 33 years include countless blessings and I experience many of them somatically while in motion, covering miles.I have Mercury’s winged shoe tattooed on my hip. It is not super original, at lest not amongst my collegiate running brethren... and yet, running is one of the truest ways I enter the world and I wanted my forever ink to say as much.

However, like Murakami explained in What I Talk about When I Talk about Running, it is an activity of quiet pain and steady effort.With Murakami in mind, today I feel I have permission to admit I hate running. I hate the difficulty.I hate the “trial of miles.”Last Saturday was 30 miles with the backpack (weighted to about 25lbs). Two days later 10 miles at an easy but steady clip (1:25 overall time).My feet ache (the perfect shoe is proving to be an illusive task), my professional work piles up and won’t stop just because I am training, and I could use more sleep.On the horizon: two days of cross training (crossfit), yoga, and then 3 rounds of repeat 10 miles with increasing rest between (1.5 hrs after first rep, 3hrs after second).

So how do I shift my intention?How do I reframe the task?

I have been reading the psychologist Jerome Bruner for my PhD life.Bruner explains in his book Acts of Meaning that one of the great human tools inside our tool kit is an individual's capacity to create stories that provide and bolster personal meaning.That this process is a way of navigating the chaos of life: “the method of negotiating and renegotiating meanings by the mediation of narrative interoperation is, it seems to me, on of the crowning achievements of human development.” Yes, right now, I hate running.But part of the story I tell about myself, to myself and to the world, is what I have shared above.I am a runner.I negotiate the rough patches with that narrative.Ultimately, I think it is possible to hate the specificity of the 'weekly toll' while still honoring and loving the wider conceptualization.So tonight I conclude that I might hate running, for now.But I imagine, no, I know, that will change- because I love being a runner.

MATT LEWIS RacingThePlanet: Madagascar 2014 competitor

Bio

Academia by way of nonprofit work by way of selling scripts and books in the entertainment industry.

Hometown
Santa Fe, NM

Profession
Obscure humanities PhD candidate

Why are you competing?
reminder that joy and fun are not always the same
thing. The former often requires everything you
have - pain, sweat, training, effort upon effort -
while the latter a tv-couch-evening-after-work.
Both have there place and time. Good to know
difference.